From Shyam Benegal, we learnt several other things and that’s why his filmmaking journey offers a fascinating case study for students and scholars of cinema

I think many cinema lovers would agree that one of the most memorable scenes of Indian cinema is the small child chucking a stone at the landlord’s window at the end of Ankur, Shyam Benegal’s directorial debut. In the context of the film, this gesture could be read as a mark of protest where the oppressed are finally beginning to act against the oppressor. I think the chucking of the stone was also the filmmaker’s symbolic protest against the dominant mainstream Bombay cinema of that time with which he had to contend all along to tell the stories that he believed in.  Shyam Benegal planted a seedling/ankur with his debut of a different storytelling sensibility in Hindi cinema and sustained that spirit in the numerous other films that he made. I use storyteller consciously because that’s what he did — tell stories that mainstream Hindi cinema had no interest in, whether it was Mammo, Bhumika, Zubeida, Manthan, Nishant, Kalyug, or Welcome to Sajjanpur amongst many other memorable films that he went on to create and leave behind for cine lovers to discuss and dissect as a testament of the times that were. Here I see a direct influence and correlation with Satyajit Ray, a filmmaker he greatly admired.

This is also a good moment to pause and reflect on whether the current filmmaking ecosystem in the country would enable a filmmaker like Benegal to sustain and make the films that he did. One must remember that many of those films were also made with State support.

In a recent interview, Benegal casually remarked that he didn’t like any of his films. Quite magnanimous of him to say but it’s a trait found in stalwarts who scoff at their own work and find it lacking in many ways. To be wedded to one’s work is a sign of the mediocre.

From Shyam Benegal, we learnt several other things and that’s why his filmmaking journey offers a fascinating case study for students and scholars of cinema. For one, his cinema contests the facile and often hurriedly made binary between art house and commercial cinema. His films upon release had to contend with the mighty masala films but he was never in denial of this reality.

Lest we forget, this was also the time of the rise of the angry young man in Hindi filmdom. Benegal’s cinema created a niche audience for itself which benefited many other filmmakers who made cinema in Hindi off the beaten track. While he is identified as one of those filmmakers who heralded the New Wave in Hindi cinema where the stories and style of filmmaking differed from the mainstream Hindi films, I wouldn’t go as far as to call him avant garde. He was a neo-realist in the tradition of a Vittorio de Sica, the Italian filmmaker he admired.

Another remarkable aspect of Benegal’s films is the actors who went on to have a life in mainstream Bombay cinema emboldened by the work they did in his films. Think of Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah, and Om Puri, who are comparable with the finest in the world. While his films lend easily to a sociological analysis owing to their location, subject matter and premise, a study of nuanced screen acting in his films is an area of enquiry that remains underexplored.

So obsessed are we with the content analysis of these films that little attention is paid to other details such as the craft of acting. And let’s not forget Divya Dutta, Rajit Kapur, and Ila Arun among others who did wonderful work in his films. From Benegal’s films, we also learnt early on to recognise an actor and also realised that actors don’t always make stars but stardom is a strange phenomenon. Stardom could be short lived but actors play a long innings. Just look around and almost all the actors that I have mentioned are still churning out decent work.

There was something else that Benegal did - make documentaries. Bharat Ek Khoj based on Jawaharlal Nehru’s The Discovery of India and Satyajit Ray are two of the most prominent ones. Here was a filmmaker who wanted to attempt both fiction and non-fiction storytelling on screen conforming to his deep-seated secularism. He did all of this while living in Mumbai, working in advertising to make a living and being surrounded by an ecosystem that paid little attention to his kind of work.

Shyam Benegal was a dreamer. Because he dreamt, many others found the conviction to walk the path that was different from the norm. And he remained a humanist to the core as his films will always bear witness.

Author: Prof. Kunal Ray, Faculty of English Literature, FLAME University.